Page 43 of Under the Stars

Audrey

Winthrop Island, New York

There are eight of them, propped around the taproom inside simple wood frames. The largest is about the size of one of the French doors in the Greyfriars sunroom, almost brushing the ceiling as it leans against the wall; the smallest reaches the top of the bar counter.

Mike stands in the middle of the taproom, arms crossed against his chest, and takes them all in. “Place looks like a fucking bordello,” he says.

“Definitely got some erotic energy going on,” Monk agrees.

Mallory looks at me and says, “Men.”

“I think they look incredible,” I tell her. “You did all the frames yourself?”

“Yeah, I took a workshop when I was at RISD. And I had some help from this college friend who’s in the art restoration business—”

“Not to mention her husband,” says Monk. “Adding ‘expert canvas stretching skills’ to my résumé.”

She pats his shoulder. “You did a great job, honey. Of course, they’re only temporary frames, until we take the next steps.”

“Which are?”

“Up to Mike,” she says. “You can just hang them up and enjoy them for yourself. Or we can get the professionals in and figure out what we’ve got here.

My opinion—and while I am by no means expert in nineteenth-century painting, full disclosure, I have been doing a deep dive into pretty much all things Henry Irving the past several weeks—is that they’re the real deal.

Filling in the missing period at the end of his life, right before he died.

Or was murdered, depending on which account you’re reading. ”

I kneel before the smallest one and examine the woman before me, painted from the waist up.

Her face is round and luminous, turned a few degrees to the side, but her hazel eyes engage you with a challenging stare.

She’s lying on a white sheet and her arms make a graceful frame around her head, like a ballet dancer in the fifth position.

Sunlight spills across her breasts and her belly from some unseen window.

Downy tufts of hair nestle in her armpits.

“It’s the same woman in all of them, right?” I ask.

“Without a doubt,” Mallory says. “Almost certainly Providence Dare. The maid who lived alone with him, after his wife died? Although she seems to have been more a poor relation than a servant per se. I couldn’t find much about her background in the historical record, not even in the newspapers that reported his death, which was a huge sensation at the time, as you can imagine.

I tried to find some info on her family, but there are enough Dares around to make it hard to know for sure without going town to town and really digging into all the birth and death records.

I did find something about a man named Elijah Dare, who was a Congregational minister in western Massachusetts in the early part of the century and was kicked out of office, basically, in about 1840 for what—if you read between the lines—seems to have been some sort of sexual misconduct.

So, the timing fits. And would add an interesting wrinkle to all this. ”

“My wife’s been a little obsessed, to be honest,” says Monk. “Our house is basically one big Victorian mood board at the moment.”

I look up from the portrait. Monk gazes at his wife with an expression of idiotic adoration; a bloom of pink appears on Mallory’s cheeks.

In my stomach, a pang stirs—Sedge has been in Boston since Monday morning.

Business, he told me when he left, dropping a kiss on my lips before he roared off in his green convertible.

What business, I remember thinking, as the car disappeared around the curve of the driveway.

Shifting around the asset allocation in your trust fund?

But I banished the thought at once. It wasn’t Sedge’s fault that his family hadn’t thrown all their money away on disastrous film projects and investments in friends’ dubious business ventures and spectacular restaurant failures.

It was just that he seemed to take it all for granted, without realizing what a gift it was to exist without this burden of financial worry like a shawl of chain mail, digging into your bare skin day and night.

And how could I tell him? He’d want to help, and I can’t take his money.

I’m already in way too deep.

I smother the pang and turn to my father. “What do you think, Mike? Could be great publicity for the Mo.”

“ Publicity? ” says Mallory. “Audrey, do you know what I’m saying here? The whole art world is going to go apeshit. Christie’s and Sotheby’s are going to be groveling on your doorstep. Once word gets out…” She shakes her head.

“You mean auction houses?” I ask.

“Audrey, just to make sure we’re clear here,” says Mallory, “these paintings are worth millions. Each. Museums, private collectors. This is the biggest art find since forever. Since the Salvator Mundi. Except I don’t think anyone’s going to worry about attribution here.

And the provenance is actually a plus, in my opinion.

The fact that they’ve been sitting in a lead-lined trunk in a remote New England inn for almost two centuries, filling in Irving’s lost period, the connection to his mysterious death, it’s like catnip to anyone who—”

“Hold on a fucking second, here,” says Mike. “Who said anything about selling them? She’s family . She stays here.”

Everyone turns to stare at him. He’s still standing in the middle of the room, pugnacious arms across his chest. A stubble of ginger beard covers his jaw.

“Are you serious, bro?” says Monk. “What about security?”

“Don’t need security if nobody knows they’re here.”

“Mike,” I say, “this is a life-changing amount of money. You could get off this island and—”

He turns to me. “Get off this island? What’s that supposed to mean?”

I throw an arm at the paintings propped around the room. “Mike, you’re a millionaire now. You could travel the world, you could do anything.”

A flush rises from the collar of his brand-new faded red Taproom At The Mo T-shirt right up his fair skin to his hairline, until he is practically monochrome from head to waist.

“If I wanted to leave,” he says, “I would have fucking left already.”

He strides out the door to the hallway and stomps up the stairs to his office.

“I can take these back to my place,” says Monk. “Plenty of security onsite.”

“That’s probably a good idea for now. If you don’t mind.”

When we’ve loaded up the Wagoneer—the tailgate goes down to fit the larger works—Monk follows me back into the taproom while Mallory secures the load. One painting remains—the smaller one, propped against the bar.

“Let’s keep this one here for now,” I say. “I kind of like it.”

“Yeah, that’s my wife’s favorite, too.” He looks at me. “So. You and Sedge, huh?”

“Yep.”

He dredges his heel against the floorboard a couple of times. “So, I’ve been meaning to kind of—look, I know it’s none of my business—”

“Correct.”

He grins. “Just let me say my piece, okay? He’s a good friend, that’s all.

I don’t let a lot of people through the firewall these days—I mean, I guess you know how it is, growing up with Meredith as your mom.

All the grifters and loonies out there. But Sedge I trust. And it’s been great seeing him so happy.

We’ve been hoping he’d find someone awesome. He deserves it.”

“It’s been fun,” I say.

“Yeah, well. Fun’s good. Fun’s cool. Nothing wrong with fun.

But—and not to come off all Victorian patriarch and everything, but where is this headed for you?

Because my man is one of the good ones, all right?

A true gentleman. I don’t want to see him get hurt.

And speaking as a man lucky enough to have convinced the love of my life to marry me, I can tell he’s in the danger zone. ”

“Excuse me? Danger zone?”

“Sorry. Poor choice of words. Let’s just say he’s gone pretty deep into the dive, at this point, and I don’t think he can pull out of it without some serious wing damage.”

“Because I’m such a vixen, right? I mean, I like how nobody seems to worry about my wing damage.”

“Okay,” he says. “Fair. How are your wings holding up?”

I crouch before the painting and link my fingers together to keep them steady. Providence Dare’s luminous face blurs in front of me. “Monk. I know you’re speaking from a good place. But this is between Sedge and me, okay?”

“I know. I realize that. One hundred percent not my place. It’s just that for a guy who built a billion-dollar business he can be pretty fucking na?ve sometimes—”

“What?” I stand up and turn to Monk. “Built a what ?”

“The business. You know. His company?”

“ What company? Are you saying he runs a company ? Like, a CEO?”

Monk stares at me incredulously. “Holy shit, Audrey. Don’t you ever google your boyfriends?”

“I didn’t—I don’t know, I just assumed—I mean, I’ve always hated—”

A grin spreads across his face. He tilts back his head and laughs. “Well, I guess we can ease our minds you’re not a gold digger, then. Holy shit. Sedge, you dark horse. Found the one woman in America as trusting as he is.”

—

In my defense, it wasn’t that I didn’t think about doing a quick internet search on Sedge Peabody. I had some curiosity. I had questions. I had trust issues.

I also have world-class PTSD from the time I first entered Meredith Fisher into the search field.

You probably already know this, but most of what you find on the internet is not true. Or, at best, only a little bit true. People state their lunatic theories and opinions as fact, and the sheer confidence of their assertions gathers up a whole cult of believers.